The Obama Boom.

[dude1394]

[Mavdog]

yes, the obama boom.....the public's approval ratings of the job our president is doing stands at 67%.

In the days immediately after Barack Obama's nationally televised address to Congress on Tuesday night, his public support has increased significantly to 67% in Feb. 24-26 Gallup Daily polling, and is now just two points below his term high. This comes on the heels of a term-low 59% reported by Gallup on Tuesday.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/116224/Ob...Increases.aspx

quite a boom compared with the previous president....

PRINCETON, NJ -- A new USA Today/Gallup poll, conducted Jan. 9-11, finds 34% of Americans approving of the overall job George W. Bush is doing as president and 61% disapproving.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/113770/Bu...sapproval.aspx

[aquaadverse]

Originally Posted by Mavdog

yes, the obama boom.....the public's approval ratings of the job our president is doing stands at 67%.



http://www.gallup.com/poll/116224/Ob...Increases.aspx

quite a boom compared with the previous president....

http://www.gallup.com/poll/113770/Bu...sapproval.aspx

Not if you use an actual comparison of the same point in the Presidency. Bush was in the 60% range in Feb. in 2001. And that was after the debacle of the 2000 election. The Stock market was in dot bomb contraction, unemployment was high.

After 100 days it was 62%.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/1768/Afte...Unchanged.aspx

[Mavdog]

bush entered office with similar approval ratings as clinton had at the end of clinton's term.

..and in dec 2008 bush's disapproval rating was at an historical high of 71%.

the public goes from more than 2/3 disapproving of the president's performance to almost 2/3 approving of the president's performance.

that's a boom. a big boom.

[Arne]

Originally Posted by Mavdog

bush entered office with similar approval ratings as clinton had at the end of clinton's term.

..and in dec 2008 bush's disapproval rating was at an historical high of 71%.

the public goes from more than 2/3 disapproving of the president's performance to almost 2/3 approving of the president's performance.

that's a boom. a big boom.

You are hilarious. Now the worse the person right before you is, the better you are when you are accepted by the public in you first weeks? It seems to me that it should be the other way around. It's relatively easy to look good in the public's eyes when you've had eight horrible years of presidency before you. And it's relatively difficult to look good when you had someone before you who looked relatively good, like Bill Clinton...

Quite frankly, this is not the type of discussion I expected from you. You can do better than that...

[Dirkadirkastan]

Why the hell would anyone approve Obama?

[Mavdog]

Originally Posted by Arne

You are hilarious. Now the worse the person right before you is, the better you are when you are accepted by the public in you first weeks? It seems to me that it should be the other way around. It's relatively easy to look good in the public's eyes when you've had eight horrible years of presidency before you. And it's relatively difficult to look good when you had someone before you who looked relatively good, like Bill Clinton...

Quite frankly, this is not the type of discussion I expected from you. You can do better than that...

my suggestion to you is to loosen up a bit.

actually, a lot.

[92bDad]

All I can say is that Avery Johnson had a high approval rating his first year as Head Coach of the Dallas Mavericks...

Things can sure change in a hurry, once the reality of the person is under the spotlight!!!

[mcsluggo]

...or, perhaps the approval ratings reflect the fact that the US population has actually accounted for the sh!t sandwich the Obama administration had handed to them when they took office.

in which case the "analysis" laid out in this thread looks kinda moronic in comparison, no?

..... just supposing....

[aquaadverse]

Originally Posted by 92bDad

All I can say is that Avery Johnson had a high approval rating his first year as Head Coach of the Dallas Mavericks...

Things can sure change in a hurry, once the reality of the person is under the spotlight!!!

While Obamas' approval rating has been fairly level or slowly falling, his disapproval rating has doubled from 12% to 24%. The ranks have grown from the "No Opinion" folks who felt they wanted to see Obama doing something besides speeches before they rated him.

The other Prez who saw this happen was Clinton. He hauled ass over to the center when Congress flipped at the midterm elections and he had a bit of a break following Reagan/H.W. Bush when the Cold War was ending and Desert Storm was successful. Obama has no real room to slide here.

Boom is a noise when you have an explosion and is not a good thing.

[Mavdog]

it's pretty funny to read the responses to my tongue-in-cheek post on obama's approval ratings.

the first post of this thread was pretty humorous to begin with, somehow linking obama with the market's malaise.

then there were the equally funny posts with the anti-obamaites exasperation with the approval ratings of obama, attempting to somehow rationalize the numbers.

now there is the most upside down remark yet.... "boom...is not a good thing".

ah, the frustration exhibited. thanks for the laugh.

[Murphy3]

Look...Obama's a spare. The only reason he's in office is because people wanted change. Now, maybe this goof can accidentally do something right.. Let's give him a few weeks before we can call him a failure. I expect him to fail simply because he had never done anything worth a crap in the past other than manage his way to the most powerful position in the world. Hell, if he were alive and white a couple hundred years ago, he'd be the kind of guy going around from farm town to farm town pawning off snake oils that are magical cures.. That's just the type of guy he is. He speaks well and is capable of forgetting anything that he's said in the past if he can something different in the present that'll help his cause..

But hey, I'm willing to give this low life a chance...

[TheMaverick]

I miss Bush.

[fluid.forty.one]

obama stimulating the senses

[dude1394]

Somehow I think he and his supporters will always find someone...it's the chicago way.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123604419092515347.html

The Obama Economy
As the Dow keeps dropping, the President is running out of people to blame.

As 2009 opened, three weeks before Barack Obama took office, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 9034 on January 2, its highest level since the autumn panic. Yesterday the Dow fell another 4.24% to 6763, for an overall decline of 25% in two months and to its lowest level since 1997. The dismaying message here is that President Obama's policies have become part of the economy's problem.

Americans have welcomed the Obama era in the same spirit of hope the President campaigned on. But after five weeks in office, it's become clear that Mr. Obama's policies are slowing, if not stopping, what would otherwise be the normal process of economic recovery. From punishing business to squandering scarce national public resources, Team Obama is creating more uncertainty and less confidence -- and thus a longer period of recession or subpar growth.
[Review & Outlook]

The Democrats who now run Washington don't want to hear this, because they benefit from blaming all bad economic news on President Bush. And Mr. Obama has inherited an unusual recession deepened by credit problems, both of which will take time to climb out of. But it's also true that the economy has fallen far enough, and long enough, that much of the excess that led to recession is being worked off. Already 15 months old, the current recession will soon match the average length -- and average job loss -- of the last three postwar downturns. What goes down will come up -- unless destructive policies interfere with the sources of potential recovery.

And those sources have been forming for some time. The price of oil and other commodities have fallen by two-thirds since their 2008 summer peak, which has the effect of a major tax cut. The world is awash in liquidity, thanks to monetary ease by the Federal Reserve and other central banks. Monetary policy operates with a lag, but last year's easing will eventually stir economic activity.

Housing prices have fallen 27% from their Case-Shiller peak, or some two-thirds of the way back to their historical trend. While still high, credit spreads are far from their peaks during the panic, and corporate borrowers are again able to tap the credit markets. As equities were signaling with their late 2008 rally and January top, growth should under normal circumstances begin to appear in the second half of this year.

So what has happened in the last two months? The economy has received no great new outside shock. Exchange rates and other prices have been stable, and there are no security crises of note. The reality of a sharp recession has been known and built into stock prices since last year's fourth quarter.

What is new is the unveiling of Mr. Obama's agenda and his approach to governance. Every new President has a finite stock of capital -- financial and political -- to deploy, and amid recession Mr. Obama has more than most. But one negative revelation has been the way he has chosen to spend his scarce resources on income transfers rather than growth promotion. Most of his "stimulus" spending was devoted to social programs, rather than public works, and nearly all of the tax cuts were devoted to income maintenance rather than to improving incentives to work or invest.

His Treasury has been making a similar mistake with its financial bailout plans. The banking system needs to work through its losses, and one necessary use of public capital is to assist in burning down those bad assets as fast as possible. Yet most of Team Obama's ministrations so far have gone toward triage and life support, rather than repair and recovery.

AIG yesterday received its fourth "rescue," including $70 billion in Troubled Asset Relief Program cash, without any clear business direction. (See here.) Citigroup's restructuring last week added not a dollar of new capital, and also no clear direction. Perhaps the imminent Treasury "stress tests" will clear the decks, but until they do the banks are all living in fear of becoming the next AIG. All of this squanders public money that could better go toward burning down bank debt.

The market has notably plunged since Mr. Obama introduced his budget last week, and that should be no surprise. The document was a declaration of hostility toward capitalists across the economy. Health-care stocks have dived on fears of new government mandates and price controls. Private lenders to students have been told they're no longer wanted. Anyone who uses carbon energy has been warned to expect a huge tax increase from cap and trade. And every risk-taker and investor now knows that another tax increase will slam the economy in 2011, unless Mr. Obama lets Speaker Nancy Pelosi impose one even earlier.

Meanwhile, Congress demands more bank lending even as it assails lenders and threatens to let judges rewrite mortgage contracts. The powers in Congress -- unrebuked by Mr. Obama -- are ridiculing and punishing the very capitalists who are essential to a sustainable recovery. The result has been a capital strike, and the return of the fear from last year that we could face a far deeper downturn. This is no way to nurture a wounded economy back to health.

Listening to Mr. Obama and his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, on the weekend, we couldn't help but wonder if they appreciate any of this. They seem preoccupied with going to the barricades against Republicans who wield little power, or picking a fight with Rush Limbaugh, as if this is the kind of economic leadership Americans want.

Perhaps they're reading the polls and figure they have two or three years before voters stop blaming Republicans and Mr. Bush for the economy. Even if that's right in the long run, in the meantime their assault on business and investors is delaying a recovery and ensuring that the expansion will be weaker than it should be when it finally does arrive.

http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/71770/

[TheMaverick]

thanks for the good read, dude.

[Underdog]

Originally Posted by fluid.forty.one

obama stimulating the senses

Is that a glass? How the hell did he get a glass into the arena?? Who the hell does he think he is, the president???

(dammit...)

[DirkFTW]

Originally Posted by Underdog

Is that a glass? How the hell did he get a glass into the arena?? Who the hell does he think he is, the president???

(dammit...)

I think it's actually carved out of solid diamond. I don't remember liquid gold looking so translucent and frothy...

[dude1394]

Oh hell he just changed it into glass. No biggie.

[mcsluggo]

yes, by looking at this 12 month snapshot of the S&P500, it is EASY to see how the downward trend OBVIOUSLY begins around late january 2009. Chow tests be damned, when you have such bold and clearcut visual evidence.

[aquaadverse]

Originally Posted by Mavdog

it's pretty funny to read the responses to my tongue-in-cheek post on obama's approval ratings.

the first post of this thread was pretty humorous to begin with, somehow linking obama with the market's malaise.

then there were the equally funny posts with the anti-obamaites exasperation with the approval ratings of obama, attempting to somehow rationalize the numbers.

now there is the most upside down remark yet.... "boom...is not a good thing".

ah, the frustration exhibited. thanks for the laugh.

Not frustration. You brought up disapproval rating. I'm not sure how quoting numbers from the same polling company for the same time period with the last President to get elected primarily by a message of being the opposite of an unpopular President that wasn't a candidate is rationalizing or showing exasperation.

The point was you can look at this stuff from a number of different perspectives. Obama is a bright guy and is letting Pelosi take the most of the heat while she seems content with the role of keeping the agenda left of center and consistent with traditional Dem values. Fair enough. I respect Obama for implementing the broad stroke philosophy he ran on.

Likewise, while there are too many variables to draw a real parallel it's still interesting to look at the last President that had a steady approval rating while his disapproval doubled also saw a Congress with low ratings passing a spending bill with zero Republican votes. If the midterm elections get Congress under new management it will be even more boom interesting.

[Mavdog]

Originally Posted by aquaadverse

Not frustration. You brought up disapproval rating. I'm not sure how quoting numbers from the same polling company for the same time period with the last President to get elected primarily by a message of being the opposite of an unpopular President that wasn't a candidate is rationalizing or showing exasperation.

what? "the last president to get elected primarily by a message of being the opposite of an unpopular president that wasn't a candidate"???

please try to make sense.

The point was you can look at this stuff from a number of different perspectives. Obama is a bright guy and is letting Pelosi take the most of the heat while she seems content with the role of keeping the agenda left of center and consistent with traditional Dem values. Fair enough. I respect Obama for implementing the broad stroke philosophy he ran on.

pelosi? she has absolutely NOTHING to do with the issue.

Likewise, while there are too many variables to draw a real parallel it's still interesting to look at the last President that had a steady approval rating while his disapproval doubled also saw a Congress with low ratings passing a spending bill with zero Republican votes. If the midterm elections get Congress under new management it will be even more boom interesting.

uh, sure. whatever.

[dude1394]

Holy moley. We are seriously being screwed by theOne.

http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2009/...ge-of-gdp.html

Wednesday, March 04, 2009
Federal Outlays as a Percentage of GDP
Average over the past half century: 20.2 percent
In 2007, the year before the crisis: 20.0 percent
In 2009, from the Obama budget: 27.2 percent
Average 2010-19, in Obama budget: 22.6 percent
In 2019, last year of Obama budget: 22.6 percent

Recall these words of warning:

HOW WILL IT ALL END? Over the last century, the largest increase in the size of the government occurred during the Great Depression and World War II. Even after these crises were over, they left a legacy of higher spending and taxes. To this day, we have yet to come to grips with how to pay for all that the government created during that era — a problem that will become acute as more baby boomers retire and start collecting the benefits promised.

Rahm Emanuel, the incoming White House chief of staff, has said, “You don’t ever want to let a crisis go to waste: it’s an opportunity to do important things that you would otherwise avoid.”

What he has in mind is not entirely clear. One possibility is that he wants to use a temporary crisis as a pretense for engineering a permanent increase in the size and scope of the government. Believers in limited government have reason to be wary.

[mcsluggo]

y'know... I wish you would occasionally actually POST something (an opinion, a rebuttal, something...) rather than just always cutting and pasting from somebody else's blog.

[dude1394]

Here's another one for ya. Maybe if you read it (like mavie) you'd get more out of it.

http://stolenthunder.blogspot.com/20...s-gimmick.html

skip to main | skip to sidebar

Genuine Trumps Gimmick
The failure of Barack Obama to comprehend the financial crisis, let alone deal with it effectively, is crumbling the façade of his competence as President. His minions, as a result, are going through the classic first stage of grief and loss, the stage of denial. That denial is performed through their ludicrous comparisons of Obama to Ronald Reagan, as if the blundering and desperate moves by the present President can be said to be reasonable and prudent, let alone considered the equal of Reagan’s leadership. To understand why the comparison is not valid in any sense, we must consider the nature and causes of the two presidents’ economic environments.

Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama each inherited a recession when they came to office. That’s not unusual, though – Presidents Kennedy, Ford, and Bush also inherited recessions when they arrived at the White House, and in fact Presidents Taft, Cleveland, Buchanan, Van Buren, and Washington were also greeted with recessions upon their arrival (in Cleveland’s case it was upon his return to the White House). Recessions are cyclical, and so far no one has been able to prevent them from happening, although a bad president can make things worse if he bungles the job. The point here, is that recessions are not ‘republican’ or ‘democrat’ in their cause per se, but should be examined in the specific causes of each and their conditions created upon the nation.

The recession which greeted Barack Obama was caused by three forces – the burst of the housing bubble, the credit crunch brought about by bank speculation, and the liquidity crisis in the domestic auto industry. The initial symptoms were an unemployment of 7.2% in December 2008 (7.6% in January 2009) and a 3.85% inflation rate.

When Ronald Reagan took office, the recession he faced was more profound, because of the heretofore unimagined combination of unemployment and inflation rising at the same time. The chief causes of that recession were the rising price of oil and instability in the Middle East. The initial symptoms were an unemployment rate of 7.2% in December 1980 (7.5% in January 1981) and a 15.81% inflation rate.

You cannot change what you cannot control. This is the essence of why Reagan’s economics were so radical. Reagan established four general goals he believed were essential to setting a sound economic course:

1 - Reduce the growth of government spending
2 - Reduce the marginal tax rates on income from both labor and capital
3 - Reduce regulation, and
4 - Reduce inflation by controlling the growth of the money supply.

While not perfect in its results, Reagan accomplished all four goals and established conditions for an unprecedented boom in business and prosperity.

Obama’s plan is far less complete, and in spirit opposes every one of Reagan’s goals, by massively increasing government spending, raising taxes on both individuals and corporations, drastically increasing regulation and driving inflation upward, deliberately so in the case of energy and finance costs. Essentially, President Obama is rolling the dice on some old notions of Keynes, hoping that simply spending massive amounts on his pet projects will renew economic prosperity by simply spending money. Any parent with a teenager knows the flaws in such thinking; spending is not desirable in itself, but only when it creates the necessary results. In the individual case, this means you pay the rent or mortgage and you buy your food, before you ever entertain the idea of buying that SUV or investing in that can’t-miss IPO. When a teenager wastes his money, he is depending on his parents to cover his needs, but the parents have to be responsible themselves for keeping sound priorities and enforcing discipline. In the case of the government, it’s necessary for government to be cautious about spending and to think through its goals and abilities before engaging on a new bout of projects. It’s catastrophic, nothing less, when a government becomes reckless in spending and in committing its resources without consideration of the critical needs. Obama’s “stimulus” package spent almost eight hundred billion dollars – before interest – without creating even one private-sector job, without addressing even one home foreclosure in process, and without even addressing consumer confidence. This is the government version of trying to justify spending mortgage money on a hooker.

Everything has to be paid for. That’s as basic as economics gets, yet somehow it gets ignored when government is putting together a budget. Literally trillions of dollars are being committed with no reasonable explanation of how it will be paid. When anyone, even the President, tells you that “only the rich” will see their taxes go up, do the math. There are simply not enough “rich” people to pay all these costs and bear these new taxes.

The historical record warns that the massive tax hikes envisioned by the Obama Administration will result in less revenue than they intend to collect. This is because what gets rewarded gets repeated, and what gets punished stops. And in practical terms, this means that when people and corporations are punished for succeeding financially under US tax law, they will find alternatives to paying taxes. They will move business off-shore, they will stop spending money on goodwill initiatives, they will hire fewer people and pay less to their employees, because the government is destroying their effective business models. Obama’s heavy-handed plan for tax and spending with government in control of every major initiative, has no successful model in practice in the world.

Comparing Barack Obama to Ronald Reagan is pathetic and arrogant, to say the least. While it must be admitted that Obama is a far better actor than Reagan ever was, he cannot hope to be even half the leader that Reagan was.

[Mavdog]

Originally Posted by dude1394

Here's another one for ya. Maybe if you read it (like mavie) you'd get more out of it.

why do these bloggers you keep posting desire to rip the obama administration for (to quote this one specifically) "The failure of Barack Obama to comprehend the financial crisis, let alone deal with it effectively, is crumbling the façade of his competence as President", when the current administration has been in office for a total of 45 days, and if anyone has been listening it is difficult to believe that obama doesn't "comprehend" what is actually happening in the economy.

in fact the actions, the words, of obama and those in his administration say just the opposite, they DO understand and appreciate the depth of the problems that confront our economy, and are trying to use each and every tool at their disposal to reduce the negative pressures that afflict it.

from increasing liquidity for lending to business to finding ways to alleviate the issues with home mortgages, this administration clearly is doing many, many things to stop the downward slide.

will their work produce positive results? don't know yet, after all its been FORTY-FIVE DAYS! geez.

I mean heck, clearly those who don't like obama revel in using the name "the One" for him, but he isn't a magician, and remember there wasn't really a wizard behind the screen in oz as wizards don't really exist...

reagan was not a wizard, and reagan's policies seem to be put upon a pedestal by many when in fact such adoration is not deserved. reagan did not get rid of stagflation by reducing taxes, stagflation was defeated by a severe drop in energy prices. reagan was guilty of huge deficit spending, just what these authors are quick to criticize obama for. reagan did reduce the income tax rates from where they were when he took office, yet the top tax rate proposed by obama is LESS than the top tax rate in reagan's terms.

give obama some time to see if his administrtion has responded correctly or not. to decide today would be based on inconclusive evidence.

[92bDad]

Originally Posted by Mavdog

why do these bloggers you keep posting desire to rip the obama administration for (to quote this one specifically) "The failure of Barack Obama to comprehend the financial crisis, let alone deal with it effectively, is crumbling the façade of his competence as President", when the current administration has been in office for a total of 45 days, and if anyone has been listening it is difficult to believe that obama doesn't "comprehend" what is actually happening in the economy.

in fact the actions, the words, of obama and those in his administration say just the opposite, they DO understand and appreciate the depth of the problems that confront our economy, and are trying to use each and every tool at their disposal to reduce the negative pressures that afflict it.

from increasing liquidity for lending to business to finding ways to alleviate the issues with home mortgages, this administration clearly is doing many, many things to stop the downward slide.

will their work produce positive results? don't know yet, after all its been FORTY-FIVE DAYS! geez.

I mean heck, clearly those who don't like obama revel in using the name "the One" for him, but he isn't a magician, and remember there wasn't really a wizard behind the screen in oz as wizards don't really exist...

reagan was not a wizard, and reagan's policies seem to be put upon a pedestal by many when in fact such adoration is not deserved. reagan did not get rid of stagflation by reducing taxes, stagflation was defeated by a severe drop in energy prices. reagan was guilty of huge deficit spending, just what these authors are quick to criticize obama for. reagan did reduce the income tax rates from where they were when he took office, yet the top tax rate proposed by obama is LESS than the top tax rate in reagan's terms.

give obama some time to see if his administrtion has responded correctly or not. to decide today would be based on inconclusive evidence.

Leaders = Leaders are like Eagles, too bad we don't have either of them here.
Idiocy = Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups
Planning = Much work remains to be done before we can announce our total failure to make progress

[Underdog]

Originally Posted by 92bDad

Leaders = Leaders are like Eagles, too bad we don't have either of them here.
Idiocy = Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups
Planning = Much work remains to be done before we can announce our total failure to make progress

[dude1394]

Mavie...Obama has been a disaster already. He floats out a stimulus package that's a democratic dream spending plan..with almost nothing immediate about it.

He intends to sign a CR that is 8% higher than last years and contains 8K earmarks.

He's trying to slam ever democrat wish list onto the american economy while our economy is sinking like a stone...all the while talking about it like it's armaggedon...then blithely telling folks that it's time to buy stocks today...tra la la.

He's going to imposed taxes on every single one of us with cap and trade for a fantasy...

He's a disaster...The reason these blogs are ripping him to shreds is that's he tra la la ing while real peoples 401K's and pension plans are going kaput.

But don't bother me now..I have a 685trillion dollar healthcare bill to get passed (don't know what the hell's in it, but gotta pass it).

Even his own party is staring to freak out at the way this guys is spending money left and right and seemingly clueless about how to fix it or really that it's all that worrisome really.

[dude1394]

Originally Posted by Underdog

Damn that's some indepth posting and analysis there. Glad you worked so hard on it. Whew....I'm much more informed now.

[dude1394]

Originally Posted by mcsluggo

y'know... I wish you would occasionally actually POST something (an opinion, a rebuttal, something...) rather than just always cutting and pasting from somebody else's blog.

Unlike the missives I keep missing from yourself right? Boy this one's a gem.

[Underdog]

Originally Posted by dude1394

Damn that's some indepth posting and analysis there. Glad you worked so hard on it. Whew....I'm much more informed now.

Just trying to keep up with you!

(sorry if it's not as impressive as reposting someone else's conspiracy blog...)

[Mavdog]

Originally Posted by dude1394

Mavie...Obama has been a disaster already. He floats out a stimulus package that's a democratic dream spending plan..with almost nothing immediate about it.

He intends to sign a CR that is 8% higher than last years and contains 8K earmarks.

He's trying to slam ever democrat wish list onto the american economy while our economy is sinking like a stone...all the while talking about it like it's armaggedon...then blithely telling folks that it's time to buy stocks today...tra la la.

He's going to imposed taxes on every single one of us with cap and trade for a fantasy...

He's a disaster...The reason these blogs are ripping him to shreds is that's he tra la la ing while real peoples 401K's and pension plans are going kaput.

But don't bother me now..I have a 685trillion dollar healthcare bill to get passed (don't know what the hell's in it, but gotta pass it).

Even his own party is staring to freak out at the way this guys is spending money left and right and seemingly clueless about how to fix it or really that it's all that worrisome really.

no, the "disaster" was the last administration, not the current one.

obama cannot refuse to sign the bill at this point in time, if you want to vent anger direct it towards congress for sending it to him.

why criticize obama for saying that the stock market has overreacted, and that stocks present a value? seems to be a good use of the bloody pulpit to me.

the cap and trade system will only cause costs to increase on those industries who spew into our environment, those who do not modernize. and those who do reduce, those who do modernize, will benefit. do you want to breathe higher levels of ozone, or have your environment negatively affected? I don't.

how can you attack a healthcare bill that's yet to be written? obama has invited all sides to the table for input....and yet you've already decided the bill is wrong. talk about premeditated...

everybody is "freaked out" because the uncertainty of where our economy is heading. to blame that on obama, rather than those who formented the sickness, is ill conceived.

[dude1394]

Bush the boogey man lasted about 2 months ago. This one's all on theOne. It's his stimulus(sss) packages...it's his budget and his plans to permanently throttle this economy all the while talking out both sides of his mouth. He's a disaster in only a month.

And THAT is what has everyone "freaked out".
Folks are voting with what they have...their wallet...
http://www.nationaljournal.com/njmag...90307_2566.php

Having praised President Obama's job performance in two recent columns, it is with regret that I now worry that he may be deepening what looks more and more like a depression and may engineer so much spending, debt, and government control of the economy as to leave most Americans permanently less prosperous and less free.

Other Obama-admiring centrists have expressed similar concerns. Like them, I would like to be proved wrong. After all, if this president fails, who will revive our economy? And when? And what kind of America will our children inherit?

The house is burning down. It's no time to be watering the grass.

But with the nation already plunging deep into probably necessary debt to rescue the crippled financial system and stimulate the economy, Obama's proposals for many hundreds of billions in additional spending on universal health care, universal postsecondary education, a massive overhaul of the energy economy, and other liberal programs seem grandiose and unaffordable.

With little in the way of offsetting savings likely to materialize, the Obama agenda would probably generate trillion-dollar deficits with no end in sight, or send middle-class taxes soaring to record levels, or both.

All this from a man who told the nation last week that he doesn't "believe in bigger government" and who promised tax cuts for 95 percent of Americans.

The president's suggestions that all the necessary tax increases can be squeezed out of the richest 2 percent are deceptive and likely to stir class resentment. And his apparent cave-ins to liberal interest groups may change the country for the worse.

Such concerns may help explain why the Dow Jones industrial average plunged 17 percent from the morning of Inauguration Day (8,280) to its close on March 4 (6,876). The markets have also been deeply shaken by Obama's alarming failure to come up with a clear plan for fixing the crippled financial system -- which has loomed since his election four months ago as by far his most urgent challenge -- or for working with foreign leaders to arrest the meltdown of the world economy.

The house is burning down. It's no time to be watering the grass.

This is not to deny that the liberal wish list in Obama's staggering $3.6 trillion budget would be wonderful if we had limitless resources. But in the real world, it could put vast areas of the economy under permanent government mismanagement, kill millions of jobs, drive investors and employers overseas, and bankrupt the nation....
...................
And I hope that the president ponders well Margaret Thatcher's wise warning against some collectivist conceits, in a 1980 speech quoted by Wehner: "The illusion that government can be a universal provider, and yet society still stay free and prosperous.... The illusion that every loss can be covered by a subsidy. The illusion that we can break the link between reward and effort, and still get the reward."

[dude1394]

The market is reacting to this kind of stuff. The shear mendacity of his statements.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/pri...ky_budget.html

The logic of Obama's address to Congress went like this:

"Our economy did not fall into decline overnight," he averred. Indeed, it all began before the housing crisis. What did we do wrong? We are paying for past sins in three principal areas: energy, health care, and education -- importing too much oil and not finding new sources of energy (as in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the Outer Continental Shelf?), not reforming health care, and tolerating too many bad schools.

The "day of reckoning" has now arrived. And because "it is only by understanding how we arrived at this moment that we'll be able to lift ourselves out of this predicament," Obama has come to redeem us with his far-seeing program of universal, heavily nationalized health care; a cap-and-trade tax on energy; and a major federalization of education with universal access to college as the goal.

Amazing. As an explanation of our current economic difficulties, this is total fantasy. As a cure for rapidly growing joblessness, a massive destruction of wealth, a deepening worldwide recession, this is perhaps the greatest non sequitur ever foisted upon the American people.

At the very center of our economic near-depression is a credit bubble, a housing collapse and a systemic failure of the entire banking system. One can come up with a host of causes: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pushed by Washington (and greed) into improvident loans, corrupted bond-ratings agencies, insufficient regulation of new and exotic debt instruments, the easy money policy of Alan Greenspan's Fed, irresponsible bankers pushing (and then unloading in packaged loan instruments) highly dubious mortgages, greedy house-flippers, deceitful homebuyers.

The list is long. But the list of causes of the collapse of the financial system does not include the absence of universal health care, let alone of computerized medical records. Nor the absence of an industry-killing cap-and-trade carbon levy. Nor the lack of college graduates. Indeed, one could perversely make the case that, if anything, the proliferation of overeducated, Gucci-wearing, smart-ass MBAs inventing ever more sophisticated and opaque mathematical models and debt instruments helped get us into this credit catastrophe in the first place.

And yet with our financial house on fire, Obama makes clear both in his speech and his budget that the essence of his presidency will be the transformation of health care, education and energy. Four months after winning the election, six weeks after his swearing in, Obama has yet to unveil a plan to deal with the banking crisis.

What's going on? "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste," said Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. "This crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before."

[dude1394]

Even krugman see's that theOne's not addressing what needs to be done here. Sure he loves all of the new guvment programs..but even he knows that theOne is doing nothing to solve the real problems here.....just using this crisis to push his political agenda.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/06/op...gman.html?_r=2

Last month, in his big speech to Congress, President Obama argued for bold steps to fix America’s dysfunctional banks. “While the cost of action will be great,” he declared, “I can assure you that the cost of inaction will be far greater, for it could result in an economy that sputters along for not months or years, but perhaps a decade.”

Many analysts agree. But among people I talk to there’s a growing sense of frustration, even panic, over Mr. Obama’s failure to match his words with deeds. The reality is that when it comes to dealing with the banks, the Obama administration is dithering. Policy is stuck in a holding pattern.

[dude1394]

Originally Posted by Underdog

Just trying to keep up with you!

(sorry if it's not as impressive as reposting someone else's conspiracy blog...)

Is this you?

American Taxpayer: "Geez, I'm getting concerned about all the money Obama is spending, and it doesn't look like it's really going to help the economy"

Oba-moonbat: "You filthy lying dog! It's all Bush's fault!. Evil! Greed! War in Iraq!
Assorted frothings! Stupid evil brain dead rePIGlican! I don't need logic or fact, you are stupid and evil and foul smelling"


American Taxpayer: "But Wall St doesn't seem to have much confidence in his economic policies and the downturn in the market is adversely affecting peoples retirement savings and the ability of job growth and recovery. I am concerned"

Oba-maniac: "Stupid filthly greedy rich pigs! They should die! Bush did it! Bad War! Dick Cheney!"

American Taxpayer: "But if no one is willing to buy the debt, and the government just prints the money anyway, won't that lead to too many dollars chasing too few goods, and result in hyper inflation?"

ObamaBot: "This is all the dirty Republicans fault! Besides, the Messiah has only been in office for a month! YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO CRITICIZE! He told us it could take up to TWO months to fix everything. Last night he cured cancer! But did you rotten crazy right wing nazis give him any credit? of course not! And you wonder why we are smug?"

American Taxpayer: "I'm just not convinced that spending a trillion plus dollars on things that don't create jobs will help. I can't see how raising taxes generates revenue and creates prosperity"

ObamaGreeter (WalMart): "We won, so shut up!"

American Taxpayer: "You're frothing at the mouth. Do you have Mad Cow disease?"

Oba-Won Kinobe: "The Force is with us"
- Richard, Manchester

[Underdog]

Originally Posted by dude1394

Is this you?

I don't support Obama - I never have (didn't support Bush or McCain either...)

The world isn't as black & white as you (or those you constantly repost) think it is...


Grow up, develop a personality, think for yourself and stop being a tool of tyranny...

[Mavdog]

Originally Posted by dude1394

Is this you?

American Taxpayer: "Geez, I'm getting concerned about all the money Obama is spending, and it doesn't look like it's really going to help the economy"

Anti-obamabat: "You filthy lying dog! It's all going to fail! Obama is Evil! The economy is based on Greed! Obama is screwing up the War in Iraq!
Assorted frothings! Stupid evil brain dead socialist! I don't need logic or fact, you are stupid and evil and foul smelling"

American Taxpayer: "But Wall St doesn't seem to have much confidence in his economic policies and the downturn in the market is adversely affecting peoples retirement savings and the ability of job growth and recovery. I am concerned"

Anti-Obamaniac: "Stupid filthly greedy socialists! They should all die! Reagan did it so much better! There's no such thing as a Bad War! If only we had Dick Cheney still there!"

American Taxpayer: "But if no one is willing to buy the debt, and the government just prints the money anyway, won't that lead to too many dollars chasing too few goods, and result in hyper inflation?"

Ati-ObamaBot: "This is all the dirty Democrats fault! It doesn't matter that the Messiah has only been in office for a month! YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO CRITICIZE OUR ATTACKING HIM!"

American Taxpayer: "I'm just not convinced that spending a trillion plus dollars on things that don't create jobs will help. I can't see how raising taxes generates revenue and creates prosperity"

Anti-ObamaGreeter (WalMart): "We will win control back in two years, so shut up!"

American Taxpayer: "You're frothing at the mouth. Do you have Mad Cow disease?"

Anti-Oba-Won Kinobe: "The Force is with us, and like Rush said we hope Obama fails"
- Richard, Manchester

fixed.

[DirkFTW]

Originally Posted by Mavdog

I think I broke it.

fixed.